For Mark Ethridge, a former managing editor of The Charlotte Observer, the costs of his own addiction seemed clearer. “More and more what I find is that you don’t really live in the present anymore,” he explained. “You’re never fully engaged in what you’re doing at any given moment, because what you really want to do is finish it in order to get on to something else. You kind of skim along the surface of life. It’s very frustrating.”
